Appeal expected 24 hours later. Final end of the trial expected in 5 years.

50/50 chance that Judge Alsup continues to cement his legacy as most sensible judge to ever be overturned because higher court judges just didn't truly understand.

Those who don't know Judge Alsup should read up a little on him. One of his more notable cases was Oracle v. Google. In preparation for that trial he actually learned how to program in Java so that he could better understand the issues at hand.

Uber’s ex-CEO: At first, Uber considered Google to be its “big brother”

IDK, kicking your ass after you stole something of theirs seems like a big brother move.

While it does appear that Uber clearly stole from Google, and bought Otto for that purpose, your interpretation isn't correct and the big brother description could be accurate. Consider the timeline. This is when Uber anticipated that they would provide the ride sharing part and Google the self driving part. Things obviously changed since then, but I'm not surprised to see Google operating in these murky areas. Eric Schmidt was famously present through the iPhone development process and sat on the board.

When given the chance to explain more fully, Kalanick essentially said that in 2015, when he believed that Google was going ahead with its own rideshare service, Uber had to act. That, in turn, lead the company to pursue autonomous driving much more quickly, which enraged Google co-founder Larry Page.

I am of the opinion that Charles Verhoeven will never win with Kalanick. Even if Kalanick were sent to jail, I think that he is so ill that nobody, including Verhoeven, would ever be able to convince him that what he is doing is wrong.

Uber’s ex-CEO: At first, Uber considered Google to be its “big brother”

IDK, kicking your ass after you stole something of theirs seems like a big brother move.

While it does appear that Uber clearly stole from Google, and bought Otto for that purpose, your interpretation isn't correct and the big brother description could be accurate. Consider the timeline. This is when Uber anticipated that they would provide the ride sharing part and Google the self driving part. Things obviously changed since then, but I'm not surprised to see Google operating in these murky areas. Eric Schmidt was famously present through the iPhone development process and sat on the board.

Well sure we hired the guy. He worked on the Google version for years, took thousands of documents with him, and setup a self driving car business we bought almost immediately - even though it couldn't possibly have done anything real in the space yet.

But it never occurred to us in a million years there might be trade secrets coming along for the ride! Cross our heart!

I get the legal angle - but I always wonder why someone on a jury would buy this. They were only interested in him for whatever Google knowledge he could bring to them to get going asap.

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

My head hurts... for whatever reason it seems like stuff was all over the place? Did they seriously say Google is working on flying cars? Or is the author having a go at us? Also noticed a ton of confusing and apparently misspelled items in the article but suspect I am not reading right or something.

And please have someone proof read before posting because things like this are confusing

"Look, this has been a difficult process. He had—this makes it not as great as what we thought it was at the beginning."

What an...eloquent response. Tell us how you really feel Travis.

The goal with testimony is to provide a desired narrative. You don't get points for eloquence.

The quoted direct/cross leave me where Uber wants me to be. It sounds like he was somewhat negligent in ensuring that his company was behaving properly with a major acquisition, but that they wanted Otto for their KSAs and not for any proprietary and confidential information.

While the rest of the day's testimony (and the plethora of articles outside the trial) may show otherwise, I'm only going off of what I see here.

Well sure we hired the guy. He worked on the Google version for years, took thousands of documents with him, and setup a self driving car business we bought almost immediately - even though it couldn't possibly have done anything real in the space yet.

But it never occurred to us in a million years there might be trade secrets coming along for the ride! Cross our heart!

I get the legal angle - but I always wonder why someone on a jury would buy this. They were only interested in him for whatever Google knowledge he could bring to them to get going asap.

The jury line is "We didn't buy him out because he had Google knowledge, we bought him because he's good". His Google employment is then spun as a badge of confidence, rather than a mark of trade-secret stealing.

To continue the Big Brother/Little Brother analogy, they were trying to get Big Bro's hand-me-downs.

Whether or not you believe them, is another matter, but I can see some jury members believing it.

The former CEO explained how Uber was initially funded by Google Ventures, Google's venture capital arm. He described it as a "little brother, big brother relationship" and noted that David Drummond, Google's general counsel, served on Uber's board of directors for years.

Here is more proof that Kalanick is not in sound mind:

Could a sane "little brother" ever demand a "Pound of Flesh" of his "big brother"? The man needs medical help.

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I wonder if there are "wrong words" or if that's what they actually said. With speaking being different from writing, I could see it being the latter.

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

he could also, you know, be writing one article each day that summarizes court action for that day. And adding a note at the bottom of the article that says he'll update it throughout the day. And then doing that ...

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

I disagree. Each hour in the trial is raising multiple issues to discuss. Putting all these issues together as you want in a single coverage would confuse everybody, including the computer which will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of comments.

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

he could also, you know, be writing one article each day that summarizes court action for that day. And adding a note at the bottom of the article that says he'll update it throughout the day. And then doing that ...

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

I disagree. Each hour in the trial is raising multiple issues to discuss. Putting all these issues together as you want in a single coverage would confuse everybody, including the computer which will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of comments.

Most of the commenters are confused because the information is so scattered. The Falcon Heavy thread is at 1500 comments, and these are barely pushing 40, so I don't know what kind of retarded computer you're using that would get overwhelmed...

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

he could also, you know, be writing one article each day that summarizes court action for that day. And adding a note at the bottom of the article that says he'll update it throughout the day. And then doing that ...

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

I disagree. Each hour in the trial is raising multiple issues to discuss. Putting all these issues together as you want in a single coverage would confuse everybody, including the computer which will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of comments.

Most of the commenters are confused because the information is so scattered. The Falcon Heavy thread is at 1500 comments, and these are barely pushing 40, so I don't know what kind of retarded computer you're using that would get overwhelmed...

Personally, I find it difficult to sift through and keep track of who said what if I were to read 1500 comments. More significant, I hope you agree that cheering liftoff audience would not be like the one following legal argumentation in a court. Different audiences are likely to appreciate different messages.

Seriously, do you find the nature of comments in the 1500 forum comparable to that of the 40? I don't.

Personally, I find it difficult to sift through and keep track of who said what if I were to read 1500 comments. More significant, I hope you agree that cheering liftoff audience would not be the like the one following legal argumentation in a court. Different audiences are likely to appreciate different messages.

Seriously, do you find the nature of comments in the 1500 forum comparable to that of the 40? I don't.

Well your computer can't handle 100 comments so there are probably a lot of difficult things for you. I'm not seeing an abundance of legalese in the comments. There are certainly more technical posts in that thread than there are here as well as more general excitement posts

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

he could also, you know, be writing one article each day that summarizes court action for that day. And adding a note at the bottom of the article that says he'll update it throughout the day. And then doing that ...

Ok so he can't spell and there's no editors

I must admit I'm not the best at spelling and wouldn't ever make it as an editor, but I don't see any spelling errors in this article. What do you see?

I must admit I'm not the best at spelling and wouldn't ever make it as an editor, but I don't see any spelling errors in this article. What do you see?

I'm only the third person to comment on the quality of the article in the first 20 comments. I hope they've fixed most of the issues by now. This isn't a very damning example (and not a "spelling" error) but there's a quote missing on this line: "Why did you hire Anthony Levandowski?" Dunn continued. I'm interested in the case and not trying to shit up the comments, I just think there would be more value if the story was more coherent and less fragmented, but that probably isn't what Cyrus and the clickmasters think

Is there any chance that Waymo will get round to arguing the point that Alsup has already told them is crucial to the case - namely what, if any, Waymo trade secrets actually made it into Uber designs.

So far there is a lot of shadow dancing, trying to paint Uber as bad boys really isn't that hard (about just about any part of their culture whether connected to the case or not), it will undoubtedly be relevant to quantum of damages but to get to that point you have to show Uber used Waymo secrets or conspired with Levendowski to unlawfully take them. We have yet to hear anything in court from Waymo's lawyers on this point, why?

The longer Waymo lawyers take to get round to the crux of the case the more likely it is that they haven't got enough evidence to prove it

I'm interested in the case and not trying to shit up the comments, I just think there would be more value if the story was more coherent and less fragmented, but that probably isn't what Cyrus and the clickmasters think

I'm really not sure what you are looking for here. There's one article per day covering one day's events at the trial. That seems entirely appropriate and has been the way of every trial I've seen covered by Ars.

It's exciting that we'll get to see the full trial unfold over such a short period of time, after such a long wait. I can't wait to see what else is in store.

Sort of. Three weeks is pretty lengthy for a trial (which I say as a lawyer), but OTOH there's certain to be extended periods when the judge clears the room for the parties' respective attorneys to explain the technical stuff to laypersons.

I'm interested in the case and not trying to shit up the comments, I just think there would be more value if the story was more coherent and less fragmented, but that probably isn't what Cyrus and the clickmasters think

I'm really not sure what you are looking for here. There's one article per day covering one day's events at the trial. That seems entirely appropriate and has been the way of every trial I've seen covered by Ars.

It's closer to 2 articles per day so far, especially if you count the data breach story which links to one of the trial threads (SEO, clicks, etc). Sorry, I'm not the only one with these thoughts. Please continue doing your thing

I'm interested in the case and not trying to shit up the comments, I just think there would be more value if the story was more coherent and less fragmented, but that probably isn't what Cyrus and the clickmasters think

I'm really not sure what you are looking for here. There's one article per day covering one day's events at the trial. That seems entirely appropriate and has been the way of every trial I've seen covered by Ars.

It's closer to 2 articles per day so far, especially if you count the data breach story which links to one of the trial threads (SEO, clicks, etc). Sorry, I'm not the only one with these thoughts. Please continue doing your thing

A data breach article put together with an article about the trial because they both involve Uber? Ugh. Glad you are not an editor here.

And I don't see anyone else here complaining about the number of articles, just the typos. And at that, one is complaining about "horrible transcribing of quotes" without being able to say whether that's what the person actually said or not.

While it does appear that Uber clearly stole from Google, and bought Otto for that purpose

Sorry, but no: the only truly clear element here -- from a legal perspective, at least -- is that Levandowski absconded with 14,000 Waymo files before leaving Google. It's not at all clear even if a) Uber did anything with those files or, FAR more importantly, b) whether Waymo's attorneys can PROVE Uber knowingly, willingly and actively employed Waymo's IP. It's absolutely not clear that Levandowski and Uber engaged in what would've been a years-long conspiracy to create Otto as a cover for Levandowski's IP theft.

Things obviously changed since then, but I'm not surprised to see Google operating in these murky areas. Eric Schmidt was famously present through the iPhone development process and sat on the board.

...which is an interesting element of the case that's gone largely unnoticed. Google Ventures was the first to pour major $$$ into Uber: at the time GV led its Series C round in 2013, Uber only had $50M in funding to date. (Obviously "only $50M" is a relative term, and perhaps most relative with respect to Uber.) As the article notes, TK testified that he believed Uber had an "understanding" with Google, though his (obvious BS) version of the story is that Google was shocked and amazed Uber was taking them on in the autonomous-vehicle space.

To buy this story, you'd also have to buy the notion that Google -- which by then had been working on AVs for nearly a decade -- felt in any way threatened by Uber, a company it was predominantly funding. Also note that Google is a cash cow that has roughly $90 BILLION IN CASH just sitting there waiting to be used. Point being: this is a crock.

What is definitely not a crock, however, is the idea of Uber freaking out when TK found out Google was going to enter the rideshare space and compete with them head-on. Who in their right mind wouldn't freak out at such a prospect? THAT would explain the curious series of events that followed, starting with Uber's poaching of Carnegie Mellon's entire robotics team.

And Google infamously did the same damn thing with Apple and the iPhone! Eric Schmidt sat as a Trojan horse on Apple's board, learning all about what would become one of the biggest technological game-changers of a device in modern history -- all after Google had purchased Android. Now: if you were TK, wouldn't you be just a wee bit pissed that your "big brother" made you effectively screw the pooch?

Well sure we hired the guy. He worked on the Google version for years, took thousands of documents with him, and setup a self driving car business we bought almost immediately - even though it couldn't possibly have done anything real in the space yet.

But it never occurred to us in a million years there might be trade secrets coming along for the ride! Cross our heart!

I get the legal angle - but I always wonder why someone on a jury would buy this. They were only interested in him for whatever Google knowledge he could bring to them to get going asap.

The jury line is "We didn't buy him out because he had Google knowledge, we bought him because he's good". His Google employment is then spun as a badge of confidence, rather than a mark of trade-secret stealing.

To continue the Big Brother/Little Brother analogy, they were trying to get Big Bro's hand-me-downs.

Whether or not you believe them, is another matter, but I can see some jury members believing it.

It's not even that far-fetched. It'd be impossible to hire anyone in these kinds of new industries otherwise, because there are usually few leaders in the field at that time, and their pedigree is usually exactly that they've worked on something similar for a competitor.

A data breach article put together with an article about the trial because they both involve Uber? Ugh. Glad you are not an editor here.

And I don't see anyone else here complaining about the number of articles, just the typos. And at that, one is complaining about "horrible transcribing of quotes" without being able to say whether that's what the person actually said or not.

I didn't say the data breach and trial articles should be combined.... I've been saying that it seems likely that Cyrus is trying to create interest in the story or at least clicks by quickly writing multiple articles and linking them together. Achilles also noticed the lack of quality in multiple articles. I don't have access to the number of views that each article is getting but I can definitely see that the number of comments is below average. I think there would be more value to the reader if the articles had better presentation (feel free to disagree) but obviously this is a business so they're going to try to get clicks and I hope they get paid per impression because I'm not clicking the big ass ads that don't even load properly on mobile

What's up with the horrible transcribing of quotes? Every article in this series seems to be littered with misspellings or wrong words. Is it an effort to get things online as quickly as possible given the nature of a live court case?

Still really enjoying the coverage, but confused about that first point.

I think Cyrus is trying to compete for clicks with his Uber stuff vs the SpaceX stuff. Kind of annoying to have multiple Uber articles with few comments on each

he could also, you know, be writing one article each day that summarizes court action for that day. And adding a note at the bottom of the article that says he'll update it throughout the day. And then doing that ...

Ok so he can't spell and there's no editors

I must admit I'm not the best at spelling and wouldn't ever make it as an editor, but I don't see any spelling errors in this article. What do you see?

Not sure about now but on the original post it was like auto-correct gone bad (maybe he is posting live via an iPad?). Things like:

‘Have you every heard anyone...’

There was a lot of others and they caused some confusion, at least for me, with trying to understand what people were asking and answering. Then the flying car statement made it worse and I was like ‘WTF?!’ Which with the previous errors made me totally not get what was being said because I thought surely they didn’t really say that. That is why getting it right is so critical so seemingly crazy statements like that don’t make you wonder if it was the author’s mistake or what was really said.

Well sure we hired the guy. He worked on the Google version for years, took thousands of documents with him, and setup a self driving car business we bought almost immediately - even though it couldn't possibly have done anything real in the space yet.

But it never occurred to us in a million years there might be trade secrets coming along for the ride! Cross our heart!

I get the legal angle - but I always wonder why someone on a jury would buy this. They were only interested in him for whatever Google knowledge he could bring to them to get going asap.

The jury line is "We didn't buy him out because he had Google knowledge, we bought him because he's good". His Google employment is then spun as a badge of confidence, rather than a mark of trade-secret stealing.

To continue the Big Brother/Little Brother analogy, they were trying to get Big Bro's hand-me-downs.

Whether or not you believe them, is another matter, but I can see some jury members believing it.

It's not even that far-fetched. It'd be impossible to hire anyone in these kinds of new industries otherwise, because there are usually few leaders in the field at that time, and their pedigree is usually exactly that they've worked on something similar for a competitor.

That's also why the new hires tend to end up indemnifying their new employer for any fallout following their own past actions – those would have been in the context of the previous employment and entirely outside of the control of the new one. The monetary compensation is supposed to make assuming this liability worth it for the employee.

In this case these indemnifying roles were curiously reversed, which only makes sense if the new employment was contingent on those past actions.